Invitations: Paper and Printing

Invitations: Paper and Printing

May 11th, 2011 @ 8:47 am by Mrs. Hyena
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This is me holding out on you just a liiiiiittle bit longer. One of my bridesmaids lives in China, and I’m going to pretend she hasn’t gotten her invitation yet. *wink*

So. Awhile back, when I first was working on them, I was telling you about the different components of the invitations. Once I had my envelopes, I went about designing our invitations. I never intended to print them myself on my printer because I wanted them to have a higher-quality finish than I think my printer can provide. I contacted a couple of printers in town that we use at work to get pricing information and found out I could get them printed for much cheaper online.

There are a lot of places online you can order prints, but I decided to go with CatPrint.

No, not you, kitty-boo.

Hi, everyone. I’m Miss Hyena. And I am a crazy cat lady.

THIS:

Image via CatPrint

They had tons of paper options for printing and, since you can’t actually touch things through the screen (yet), I asked them for their wedding-paper samples, which they sent to me for free. They felt pretty. I couldn’t decide between four of the five samples they sent me! They were all so nice, and one was textured, and two of them were shimmery…I let Mr. Hyena touch them, and he decided the one he liked best was the 130-lb. ultra-heavy card stock in white. It’s soft. ^_^ Oh, and they did a beautiful job on the invitations, and I lurve them.

The thing I really like about CatPrint is that I could order the invitation pieces in the quantities I needed them; I found through most of the local printers you had to purchase quantities of 100, 250, or 500, and I didn’t need that many of them. Especially because, as you’ll see soon, I had many varieties of inserts for the invites…

I promise the next post is the big reveal! Pinky swear!

(Catprint did not pay me for this post. They’re just awesome and I can’t stop saying nice things.)

Tags: college-station, invitations |

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8 Responses to “Invitations: Paper and Printing”

Bee

Miss Pony (message) 4,175 posts, Honey bee

This option is looking better and better for our invitations. I am just so nervous about doing them ourselves. Thanks for the info!

5/11/11 @ 9:13 am (reply)

Bee

Mrs. Meerkat (message) 3,216 posts, Sugar bee

This is an amazing find!!!! Thank you so much for sharing!

5/11/11 @ 9:41 am (reply)

Member

Kcoleybear (message) 683 posts, Busy bee

I can’t wait to see the final product. I am currently trying to design our invites and figure out printing options. I was not very happy with the print shop we used for our save the dates, so I am thinking we will use an online printer. I will definitely be puttting Cat Print on my list of ones to check out.

5/11/11 @ 10:14 am (reply)

Bee

Miss Cinnamon Bun (message) 1,100 posts, Bumble bee

We used Catprint too! We ended up printing ours on the cotton stock, and they’re just beautiful!

5/11/11 @ 10:50 am (reply)

Member

canuckbee (message) 319 posts, Helper bee

I was nervous about doing it myself as well, however it all worked out great. My advice for anyone going this route, make sure you give yourself plenty of extra time because it will take longer than you expected, and no matter which printer you use, make sure you can get a proof before you pay for anything!

I went the semi-DIY route as I had a friend who is a graphic designer do the design work. I didn’t want to go the pocketfold route due to the increase cost (even when DIY them) and also due to the increased shipping costs as the majority of my invitations were being shipped outside the US. I ended up going for a tri-fold style with this as my inspiration http://tiny.cc/9z553 and we had them printed at http://www.moxicopy.com for only $11 for 100! (In contrast the quote from catprint was $55)

I bought the paper from LCI paper, wrap around labels from onlinelabels.com and envelopes from http://www.envelopperinc.com and had everything (other than the envelopes) shipped directly to moxicopy.

Here is the complete price breakdown
Printing 100 invitations = $11
Paper for invitations = $50 (I LOVE the paper Petallics Beargrass linen.)
Envelopes = $25
Labels = about $3, as I bought 700 labels for $19 and I’ll be using the remaining labels for other projects.

Total price .88 cents an invitation!

5/11/11 @ 11:35 am (reply)

Member

Lo (message) 538 posts, Busy bee

I am excited to see your finished invitations! I used Catprint too and had a wonderful experience, I too got the free samples and had a hard time deciding which paper to use but went with the Heavy Card Stock. I printed about 100 of each piece for my invite but only 25 Rehearsal Dinner invitations and the cost was great plus I used a custom size for the main invite. The thing that totally sold me was the free “hard copy proofs” that they offer. I got mine quickly and after realizing I had made an error with my margins their customer service was helpful in getting it fixed. Super excited to send out my final invites this week. I know I sound like a commercial but I hope this helps other DIY brides!!!

5/11/11 @ 5:23 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Tartlet (message) 3,207 posts, Sugar bee

Love that you used the ultra heavy card stock! Looking forward to the big reveal.

5/11/11 @ 7:37 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Hyena (message) 1,882 posts, Buzzing bee

@Miss Pony: You’ll do fine! It was an easy process.
@Miss Cinnamon Bun: Mmmm cotton paperrr…
@canuckbee: Great advice, and I’m impressed how affordable those were!
@Lo: That’s true, I totally forgot about this! The first proofs I’d screwed up my uploaded PDF quality, and they fixed it no problems!

5/11/11 @ 10:23 pm (reply)